week 36 for 365/2

Sept 1-7

#244 - As I'm sitting here watching a baseball game, I feel compelled to try my hand at my rusty digital skills.  And I made a simple haiku (my first!)

Here's the original image before textures and adjustments....

#245 - trying my hand at some sketching - the weather was too pretty to spend time in my messy art room so I headed out to the deck.  Inktense pencils for color.....

#246 - still sketching - this time out front, looking at a neighbor's house.  (Dan said it looks like the house but with crooked walls!  I said, it's a sketch not an architectural rendering - good answer, right?? :))

#247 - still layering and working on a couple of mixed media pieces....I added some modeling paste to this (the circles in the lower left and across the top).  I'm keeping progress photos so when it's done, I'll post them all in some sort of order - this is where I am now.

#248 - another mix media piece - this one is kinda a hot mess right now, but I see corners of potential.  The scribble lines are made using fluid acrylic paint in a squirt bottle (learned about it in a Jane Davies video and it's fun to use) (sorry couldn't find the exact video)

The scribble lines were made with this fineline squirt bottle.

Filled this marker with shiny copper - another new tool as recommended by Jane.

#249 - I finally broke down and bought ONE fashion magazine so I could come up with some funky silhouettes so I'm tracing & cutting & you'll see them in my art journal (ala Dina Wakley again....still finding inspiration in her book).

Hope you find time to be creative this week!

week 16 - 365/2 (part 2)

April 14-20 - a few more projects for you to check out as I keep working on my 365......

#107 - another art journal page on black gesso background, then some brush clean-off swipes.  My new 48 acrylics had several metallics which I never really use.  I tried it out here and love the shimmer so I'll have to try it again - I like it more than I thought because it's subtle......

#108 - a little digi art playing from a photo I took on my garden walk a few days ago....
original

adjusted with layers and spot color......

Used a free texture called Old Tablecloth from Pixel Dust.....

#109 - Documented Life for this week challenged us to use a piece of cardboard food box in a creative way..... I actually use food cardboard all the time (mostly for mail art) so struggled a bit to come up with something I thought was 'creative'.....  So, I had my popcorn box "POP" apart!  :)

#110 - I made a few postcards for the MMSA theme of blue and brown.

Hope you enjoy a creative, art filled week!

AEDM #27

Here I am again, trying to finish out the month with creating a little something every day......

Some more digital playing around..... this is a pic I took of Dan this summer on vacation at St Augustine, FL

Then I played with combining a photo of water and a pile of rocks.....

I love this second one - wish I could remember how I accomplished it! :)

PAF: entrance

I haven't participated in Photo Art Friday in months and months.  I love working on digital art but it all just takes so much time.  And now since I haven't done it in so long I've forgotten many of the techniques that I'd figured out and liked.  But, I want to edge back in now and then so I don't totally forget everything.

Bonnie at Pixel Dust Studio hosts a Friday (open Thurs nites for links) roundup where you can share your photo art efforts.  She offers a weekly theme if you want, but you're encouraged to share whatever you've been working on.  This week's theme:  Entrances/Exits.  My submission:  Enter Spring with a quote by AA Milne.

My photo of a snowy daffodil is blended with Bonnie's Blank Page texture.  It might be a bit premature to hint at spring, but I'm employing a little wishful thinking.....  :)

AEDM #10-12

An update for AEDM - check in with Leah at Creative Every Day to catch up on what others are doing.... Saturday I spent the day planted in front of my computer tagging, retagging, more tagging of photos. So, another digital creation.  Since it's the season of gratitude, thought I'd go that direction....

My photo of a yucca plant bloom, plus a couple of blurry bokeh pics as part of the background, some digital scrapbooking elements and my first digi art journal page is created..... :)

A different kind of creativity:  I thought it time to embrace fall more completely, so I moved out my summery candles and sea glass and created a fall display on my sideboard.

I added my wrapped rocks, some wrapped sticks and beach finds to my candle plate and a few silk leaves for bold color.  That's about as much fall decor as I put out because I'm really all about Christmas.....fall is just a holding pattern til the day after Thanksgiving when I can pull out my bins of Christmas decorations! :)

For day 12, I finished my companion piece to the book I won from Fiona.  I'm really pleased with the result of this - I focused on creating layers and trying to forget about the layers I was covering up, just enjoying what was on top.

Before and after (obviously shot at different times of the day):

The brush was a yard sale find with stone disks and bone handle, don't know what kind of hair in the brush, but it's very cool.  Fiona's long narrow book is such a delight of pattern and texture that I wanted something to complement it.....

So, I used similar elements: color palette, black lines, etc. but I added a little teal ... well, because I like the color! :)  There's a button and the circles are from the baby wipe I used when smooshing around the paint, so it's in the exact same tones....I just found interesting patterns on the dried wipe.  Such a great fabric texture.

Keeping my focus and making time to create every day is a challenge this month, but I'm game. Still plugging along!  What path did your creativity lead you down today?

  visit AEDM

AEDM #8

Somehow I missed a day or two......ah well.  Art Every Day Month, hosted by Leah at Creative Every Day continues and there are so many creative participants.....hope you'll take some time to visit one or two.

Since I'm spending so much of my free time glued to my computer as I continue the gargantuan job of retagging my 20,000+ photos, I thought it made sense to create digital art this time.

The original photo is a firework photo and the little hiding people are cut from a gardening book I have.

Add some textures and play with filters and there you go.

What did others come up with?  See the links at Creative Every Day.

APR and IA

Once again my two favorite challenges have meshed in their themes.  Artists Playroom (the 29th week!) hosted by Jenn at Just Add Water Silly is encouraging us to do something botanical.  Over at Inspiration Avenue, the theme is rose.  W-e-l-l......first I did something digital with one of my bazillion rose photos (layers, brushes, splotches, color, cutting & pasting):

I used this photo and a separate one of just leaves as the starting point:

If you like roses, here are a few more of my fave shots:

Okay, enough of that - but then I realized that wasn't enough so I printed a couple more pics and decided to see what I could do with collage.  

These smaller two collages I started with scraped paint backgrounds made at Jane's class at Art and Soul; the top one is on a large Michaels sale postcard, gessoed and stamped/painted, etc.

Hope you'll join in when you can - Inspiration Avenue (IA) and Artist Playroom (APR) are welcoming, encouraging communities of creative folks who want to support your artistic efforts. So come play with us!

IA: teapot

Inspiration Avenue theme:  teapot.  Well, I can't draw a teapot.  Not and have it look much like a teapot.  All symmetrial and even and dimensional.  Unlike some Aussie friends I could name (Tracey!) - this is totally in her wheelhouse.


But, I do have a beautiful teapot we bought on our trip to China.  I have a camera.  I have PS Elements.  I make art! :)

I haven't used my camera artistically in months - it might be time to pull it out and remind myself why I love it so much!

paf: horizon

Bonnie at Pixel Dust Photo Art is once again hosting Photo Art Friday and this week's prompt is horizon.  I decided to use one of my watercolor paintings and see what I could come up with.  I tried a couple of different paintings with horizons and settled on this....

I like how my merging of the other photo layers gave this painting some texture in the water and sand and made it look a little stormier instead of the calm, glassy feeling of the original.  It's a composite of the following photos of mine:

original painting

icy glass (above) used at overlay blending mode 50%

snowy footprints used at hard light 37%

detail of a mixed media piece which I erased most of except the white stripe and bird used at multiply 61%

Thanks again Bonnie for providing a place to experiment with digital art and often take it way outside my usual boundaries.